Mobile phones and other portable communication devices have gone from being rare and expensive pieces of equipment used primarily by the business elite, to a pervasive low-cost personal item. In many countries, mobile phones now outnumber land-line telephones, with most adults and many children now owning mobile phones. In the United States, 50% of children own mobile phones. It is not uncommon for people to simply own a mobile phone instead of a land-line for their residence. In some developing countries there is little existing fixed-line infrastructure and consequently mobile phone use has become widespread. In general, a mobile or cellular telephone is a long-range, portable electronic device for personal telecommunications over long (or short) distances. Most current mobile phones connect to a cellular network of base stations (cell sites), which is in turn interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) (the exception are satellite phones). With high levels of mobile telephone penetration, a mobile culture has evolved, where the phone becomes a key social tool, and people rely on their mobile phone address book to keep in touch with their friends. Many phones offer text-messaging services to increase the simplicity and ease of texting on phones. Many people keep in touch using text messaging, such as SMS, and a whole culture of “texting” has developed from this.
Recently modern mobile phones or other mobile devices may be located either by cell-signal triangulation or through Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking. In general, mobile device service providers are increasingly required to provide positioning information to support emergency services. When using cell-signal triangulation, mobile device users can be tracked at all times regardless of whether a cell call is underway. For instance, since mobile devices perform a periodic connectivity check to the service provider, the check registers the device relative to cell towers and can be used for triangulation.
Another technology exhibiting a rise in popularity includes electronic data networks, such as the Internet. The Internet, sometimes called simply “the Net,” is a worldwide system of computer networks in which a client at any one computer may, with permission, obtain information from any other computer. The most widely used part of the Internet is the World Wide Web, often abbreviated “WWW,” which is commonly referred to as “the web.” The web may be defined as all the resources (e.g., web pages and web sites) and users on the Internet that use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or variations thereof to access the resources. A web site is a related collection of web files that includes a beginning file called a home page. From the home page, the user may navigate to other web pages on the web site. A web server program is a program that, using the client/server model and HTTP, serves the files that form the web pages of a web site to the web users, whose computers contain HTTP client programs (e.g., web browsers) that forward requests and display responses. A web server program may host one or more web sites.
Various applications of the Internet, and of the web, involve marketplaces that provide goods and/or services for sale. For instance, consumers may visit a merchant's website to view and/or purchase goods and services offered for sale by the merchant (and/or third party merchants). Some network-based marketplaces (e.g., Internet- or web-based marketplaces) include large electronic catalogues of items offered for sale. For each item offered for sale, such electronic catalogues typically include product detail pages (e.g., a web page) that specifies various information about the item, such as a description of the item, one or more pictures of the item, as well as specifications (e.g., weight, dimensions, capabilities) of the item.
While the system and method for generating recommendations based on similarities between location information of multiple users is described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that the system and method for generating recommendations based on similarities between location information of multiple users is not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the system and method for generating recommendations based on similarities between location information of multiple users to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the system and method for generating recommendations based on similarities between location information of multiple users as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.